After a pause, Dad said, “Really? I’ll have to take a look at it. Did he say anything about that?”

“Oh, not a word.”

Carrie heard her father picking up his keys-he’d walk by here any minute. She shut the door to the bathroom quietly and locked it. She turned on the light and was about to turn on the water when she heard her dad say, “Where are the kids? We should have shut the door.”

“They’re in the kitchen.”

“I’ll say good-bye to them, then.”

Carrie waited until their voices retreated, then quickly washed her hands and hurried toward the kitchen.

“Oh, there you are,” her dad said, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I have to go into Las Piernas to see Grandfather.”

“Where were you?” her mother asked Carrie.

“I took the recycling out,” Carrie said.

“She was gone a loooong time,” Aaron said.

Carrie froze, but Genie said, “No she wasn’t, silly.” She smiled at their parents. “Aaron thinks any minute Carrie isn’t here to spoil him is a loooong time.” She mimicked him perfectly, making both Aaron and Troy laugh. Carrie smiled gratefully at her.

Her mother was still studying her, but that was interrupted by Troy accidentally knocking over a carton of milk. Carrie and Genie immediately set to work on cleaning up the mess while Mom and Dad soothed Troy.

“Sorry to leave you with all this chaos, honey,” Dad said to Mom. He watched her, then said, “Do you want to come with me?”

Mom seemed surprised. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“But the kids…”

“We can bring them, too.”

“At a time like this?”

“You know Dad loves to see any of his grandkids. They’ll cheer him up.”

“Why does Grandfather need cheering up?” Genie asked.

“One of the cousins died, Genie,” Dad answered. “I don’t think you ever met her. Do any of you remember Sheila?”

All four children shook their heads. There had been deaths before this-Dad had twenty brothers and sisters, and a few aunts, uncles, and cousins had been lost in the past few years. Grandfather had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren now, and many of his children and grandchildren had adopted children or become foster parents with large families of their own. Carrie loved it when the whole family-well, most of it-had its annual reunion. It almost felt as if there was a whole country of Fletchers, even if not everyone used that last name. But she couldn’t remember anyone named Sheila.

“She didn’t go to any of the reunions,” Dad said.

Carrie waited to see if her dad would say Sheila had been shot, but he didn’t.

Her mom said, “Roy, is it safe? You don’t think…there won’t be anyone…”

“No, of course not. I’ll call just to make sure. How soon can you be ready?”

“Kids?”

“Five minutes!” they shouted in unison, a familiar family joke about how much time they would need. Genie and Carrie took the boys by the hand and hustled them upstairs to get them out of their pajamas and dressed.

Carrie was already dressed, Genie just needed to put on shoes. Carrie followed Genie to her room, where she had just enough time to sign to her sister, Thank you! I have so much to tell you.

Genie signed back, Not in the car. Mom will be watching.

Mom didn’t know sign language, and if she saw the two of them engaged in secret conversation, she would put a stop to it. Dad knew how to sign, so they were only supposed to practice when he could watch what they said.

At Grandfather’s, Carrie signed as Genie finished tying her shoes.

Yes, her sister signed back, standing. Genie called out to the boys that it was time to go downstairs, even while she continued signing to Carrie, Yes, at Grandfather’s.

Tuesday, April 25

10:04 A.M.

NEWSROOM OF THE

LAS PIERNAS NEWS EXPRESS

JOHN decided to go with the additional follow-up story about missing children, which kept me busy all morning.

When I called Jane Serre about her son, Luke, I found her not only sober but purposeful. Gerry the murder victim buried on the Sheffield Estate was a different man from Gerry the ex-husband who had once been believed to have robbed her of her child. She was determined to find both her son and Gerry’s killer. “That bastard not only took my child from me, he made me hate poor Gerry for no good reason. He killed Luke’s father.”

Neither of us mentioned our worst fears about what might have become of her son.

I started to call all the numbers I had gotten off Sheila Dolson’s notepad. The first seven were numbers of news producers or city rooms. If I reached a friend in the news business when I called them, I asked what they could tell me about her. The answer was the same everywhere: She was viewed as an obvious publicity-seeker whose credentials were out-of-state and therefore suspect. Local law enforcement claimed that she had no relationship with the Las Piernas Police Department or Sheriff’s Department. One or two news organizations had planned to check into her background with an eye toward possibly talking to her in the future, but now that there would be no future, those plans were canceled. Now, her murder was another matter, and what could I tell them about that?

Not much. Read the Express online and you could find out just about everything I knew about Sheila.

Ben Sheridan had called me before I left for work, angry that he had to learn about Sheila’s death when Vince and Reed had come by first thing in the morning-and asked him if he had read the Express yet. He calmed down and admitted that it would have been a little awkward for me to have phoned him at one o’clock in the morning. He further admitted that he might be reacting so strongly because while he was talking to the detectives, he had received a call from Anna. “She’s upset about the murder, upset about Sheila’s lies, and…I’m not really the person she wants to turn to for comfort in this particular matter,” he said.

After we hung up, I realized I needed to ask him some questions that I knew he wouldn’t answer without permission from the authorities he was working for, so I called the coroner’s office and asked for the county coroner, Carlos Hernandez. I wanted Carlos to give Ben permission to let me know if the teeth Sheila and Altair had supposedly found had anything to do with either Luke or Gerry Serre.

My husband had told me on more than one occasion that Carlos had a terrific sense of humor, but if Frank had seen that side of Carlos, I hadn’t. Carlos, in my experience, treated the press with formality and seriousness. After a few moments of solemn consideration of my request, he said, “If the homicide detectives in charge of the case have no objections, I have no objections.” He preferred to talk it over with Vince and Reed, and said that he’d ask Ben to call me, or would call me himself. As he ended the call, he said, “I’m sure you are in a great hurry, and I would hate for this office to appear to be too cautious.”

That made me start to believe Frank could be right about him.

Ben called less than thirty minutes later to say-with no small amount of exasperation-that he believed the teeth had belonged to two different children.

“Because?” I asked.

“They are the same tooth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Numbering systems probably won’t mean anything to you, will they?”

“Give me terms that will mean something to our readers.”

“What challenges you set before me!”

“Ben.” I said it in a warning tone.

“Both teeth are deciduous upper central incisors which seem to have been lost through exfoliation.”

“Ben.”

“All right-for a layperson-they are deciduous teeth. That means they are baby teeth or milk teeth. Lost through exfoliation-they fell out in the natural way anyone loses baby teeth, just before the permanent teeth appear. You have four central incisors-these are upper front teeth. A child’s upper front teeth.”